Bridge becomes landscape

Two projects still at the drawing board stage – by Thomas Heatherwick and Michael Maltzan – suggest new ways of thinking about major infrastructures linked to making connections – and in harmony with the natural world

In a future that architects and planners picture as ever more natural, with buildings designed not just so that they do not consume resources but can even become productive organisms, one of the most interesting challenges is presented by infrastructure. A good example of this new sensibility are concepts developed by Thomas Heatherwick and Michael Maltzan, which are oriented towards rethinking types of connections that have up to now seen “nature” as a barrier in terms of infrastructure-landscape.

The idea behind the Garden Bridge in London designed by Heatherwick with the garden designer Dan Pearson is to lay out over its 366 metres of length a pedestrian route with recreational facilities set in an extraordinary hanging garden, connecting the North and South Bank of the Thames. Currently blocked by a financial review (the construction will be funded by charitable gift aid and public money), the project belongs to the great English tradition of landscape gardening and aims to create a new landmark in one of the greenest capitals in Europe, whose parks already occupy almost 40 per cent of the metropolitan area. In the name of biodiversity, the Garden Bridge will not host just local species of plants, but will introduce horticulture and a carefully controlled set of wild fauna into the heart of the city. The sequences into which the route is divided will offer an experience that changes with the seasons, and in the section close to the South Bank will be devoted to the original marshy landscape of the area, conjured up by a vegetation of willows, birches, alders, geraniums, primroses and violets. At the other end of the bridge wisteria, magnolias, roses, lilies and campanulas will pay homage to the sophisticated ornamental gardens of the North Bank.

Thomas Heatherwick’s pedestrian and “biodiverse” London Garden Bridge will (perhaps) be built over the Thames, connecting the North and South Banks. (Courtesy Arup)

The renewal of the Arroyo Bridge proposed by the American architect Michael Maltzan was born instead as an experimental concept, intended to serve as a pilot model on US highways and awaken public opinion to environmental problems. The project aims to improve a sense of impactful infrastructure that, to the west of the Californian city of Pasadena, spans the spectacular landscape of the Arroyo Seco watercourse with its ten highly polluting lanes in parallel to the unmistakable Colorado Street Bridge, built in 1913. In fact the present bridge has the appearance of a disfiguring infrastructure of Route 134, looming over the fragile ecosystem of the canyon with its hiking trails, the Casita de Arroyo and the social housing project for which Habitat for Humanity has regenerated a former military facility. With the collaboration of Arup Los Angeles, Maltzan intends to turn the existing bridge into an “environmental machine” that meets some fundamental requirements: making the experience of driving over the Arroyo Seco more pleasant through a greater integration with the context, reducing noise and pollution with acoustically insulated barriers and an overhead canopy of porous concrete, getting the structure to blend into its surroundings with an outer “skin” of green walls and supplying arid Pasadena with water and clean energy by means of a complex and efficient system of rainwater collection and storage and photovoltaic panels embedded in the roof.

For the moment Michael Maltzan’s project for the Arroyo Seco River Bridge at Pasadena is just a concept. It is intended to be an improvement on the existing high-impact ten-lane structure. (Courtesy Michael Maltzan Architecture)

The sea, the scents of an island and contemporary art, to be explored on foot...

13 October 2018

Founded in 1961 by Piera Peroni Abitare magazine has crossed the history of costume, architecture and design, international, following in its pages the evolution of our ways of life and how we inhabit places